I got a sobering lesson on how secure my car and its contents aren’t last night.

A friend of a friend was over, who also owns a Dacia 1310. He recently lost or broke the key to his trunk and needed to get something out of it, so he asked me for my keys. I didn’t understand this bizarre request at first, what with the language barrier and all.

You want what now?

Your car keys.

Why?

To open my trunk.

But how…

Just give me the keys!

First he tried my trunk key and it didn’t work.  Then he tried my door key and it open the mother$^%$@.  Apparently Dacia only makes a handful of unique key cuts, then adds minor alterations for each lock that are so faint and pointless that odds are that if you have a half dozen Dacia keys and give the lock a good jiggle, you can open virtually any Dacia.

Now I understand why every clunker on the street has a car alarm, set to maximum sensitivity, so that it will trigger if someone lightly coughs within 10 metres of the car. Two minutes doesn’t pass during the day when you can’t hear a car alarm going off somewhere nearby.  Unfortunately, with all these alarms blaring all day, no one bats an eye when an alarm goes off anymore, as they all sound exactly the same and if the car is sitting on a busy street, the alarm is set off every time a bus rolls by or a dog pees on it.

I’m planning to leave for a 2-3 weeks road trip early next week and suddenly I have to seriously rethink security for my bags, which hold items of monetary and work value that would hopelessly sink me if they were to be pinched.